Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to enter this debate with regard to the Wielangta fighting fund and I note the crocodile tears that I am seeing in the Senate this afternoon. I want to address this issue of a moral imperative because that has been something that we have heard from the coalition side. In Tasmania, we are seeing species driven to the brink of extinction. We are seeing, in particular, the swift parrot and the wedge-tailed eagle, not to mention the stag beetle, being driven to extinction because of forestry practices. That is not just my assertion; it is something that Forestry Tasmania, in their own reports, admit to in relation to the wedge-tailed eagle in the north-east of the state. Yet we have a senator supposedly representing Tasmania and supposedly representing conservation—that is, the Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation—standing up in here and actively condemning people who are giving their time and effort and, in the case of people making donations, their money, to protect threatened species.

We have just had Threatened Species Week in Australia and what we have found is that habitat loss, combined with alien invasive species and exacerbated by global warming, are leading us into the third major era of mass extinction. We have a senator who has the gumption to take on the fact that the EPBC Act does not give protection to threatened species in Australia. The Minister for the Environment and Heritage refuses to use his powers under the act to protect threatened species such that people have to go to court in this country in order to try to bring the issue of what is happening to threatened species into the public arena and to expose the weaknesses in the legislation.

The extraordinary thing about Senator Brown—and I have known him since the 1983 Franklin campaign—is that I have known him to mortgage everything he owns to put into campaigns for conservation. I have seen him fly from one end of the country to the other in a state of near exhaustion in order to attend fundraiser after fundraiser to put funds into campaigns to save threatened species and special areas of the country. Only last weekend he was up at the Macquarie Marshes, where the government is very happy to facilitate the large cotton growers taking the water out of those marshes and allowing them to die. Yet we have the ridiculous situation in this Senate where Senator Abetz comes in here and tries to make an issue of the fact that Senator Brown has made the disclosure, as is required, that he opened a bank account in which to put the donations to pay for the case that he is taking to court to try to protect Wielangta and expose the fact that the Commonwealth is refusing to protect the threatened species in that area. Report after report has come out showing us that soil carbon in native forests and old-growth forests desperately need to be maintained. The minute those forests are knocked down, that soil carbon is released into the atmosphere. Where is the minister for conservation? Where is the minister for environment? They are nowhere—absolutely nowhere.

Apparently there is no moral imperative in the government to protect threatened species. There is no moral imperative in this government ever to act in the public interest. Instead, the interest they are protecting is that of Gunns corporation. Senator Abetz, the minister for forestry, is actually the minister for Gunns. The action he has been taking in supporting the managed investment schemes is a thinly disguised effort to support Gunns in their operations. Gunns have come out and said that they cannot build their pulp mill. The economics for that pulp mill are so shaky and so lacking in viability that the only way they can build it is to rely on the taxpayers, via Senator Abetz and his colleagues from Tasmania, pouring money into support of Gunns and converting native forests.

We have had government senators pointing the finger when there has been clear disclosure, and yet, during the debate that we had on changing the rules about donations, Senator Abetz stood up and said, ‘From now on the government believes it is entirely appropriate for anyone to be able to donate $80,000 to $90,000, without disclosure, to any political party in Australia. Anyone can do that by donating $10,000 to each state branch of the Liberal Party, the Labor Party or any other party.’ Senator Abetz has brought into this chamber legislation that allows big business to give $10,000 to branches of the Liberal Party in every state—and none of it has to be disclosed. But he is suddenly desperately interested in finding out who is donating money for forest conservation in this country. What is more, Senator Brown is keen to see that that disclosure is there on the record in the disclosure register.

After the next election I think people will recognise that we have no disclosure laws in this country, because if you can give $90,000 without having to disclose where it has come from then effectively you have no disclosure. Today, in this Senate, we saw the impact of the four major oil companies watching the government jump—and the opposition with them, saying ‘How high? Let’s get rid of that legislation that restricts the oil majors and the two major supermarket chains.’ That has happened already. Big business has stopped the initiative of the Greens to get rid of junk food advertising on children’s television. Where did that come from? It came from the major food outlets for those junk foods.

So let us not come in here and listen to the complete nonsense we have heard this afternoon. Instead, let us think about the moral imperative we all have, as members of the human species, to recognise that we are in the midst of a species extinction and that it is our responsibility to protect ecosystems and build resilience in ecosystems so that we can at least try to withstand what is going to happen, and what is happening already, as a result of climate change. Instead of that, this government sees no moral imperative to protect threatened species. This government sees no moral imperative to stop, and mitigate as much as possible, the worst impacts of global warming.

The government sees no moral imperative to abolish this ridiculous donations scheme we have for elections, instead of having public funding for elections and banning corporate donations altogether, which would be the most democratic thing to do. Instead, we have a government which has overseen a regime which facilitates secret donations from shadowy sects or anybody else who wants to give $90,000 to a political party. And at the same time this government tries to persecute those who wish to donate whatever savings or whatever they can towards doing what the government ought to be doing through legislation.

If you want to have a debate about moral imperatives let us bring it on. Let us talk about intergenerational equity. Let us talk about responsibility to our children and grandchildren on species extinction and global warming. Let us talk about personal integrity and let us have any one of you stand up and tell us whether, in the public interest, you have ever mortgaged anything you owned. I will bet there is not one single person on the coalition side who has ever mortgaged anything and dared risk it in order that the public interest was served. Senator Brown ought to be congratulated for the fact that, over more than 20 years, I have known him to do this time and time again. He has put everything he owns on the line—in some cases to the point where all of his colleagues and friends have been desperately concerned about what is going to happen—in order to be able to pay money back and in order to support the campaigns and get the outcomes that we need.

So I think it was a foolish move to come in here today and to attack the integrity of Senator Brown, who stands head and shoulders above just about anyone else I could think of in terms of the personal commitment and sacrifices he has made to a cause that he believes in.